Hi Everyone,

As promised here is the slightly lengthier email as to what i have been up to. It has been a while since i last wrote aplogies for this but i have been pretty busy, and after finishing work where i had all the FREE internet access i wanted, its a little more difficult to get the time and the money to sit on and write big updates. I will try more though frequently though. Anyways, as most of you know i am now travelling the east coast of Australia. In the last few weeks in the coffee palace, all was as normal. We drank, had fun and genrally socialised and had good evenings with all of our new friends. I cant remember how much of the last few weeks i reported on, but we had some pretty big nights as you can imagine to give us a proper send off, including another kareoke night which was a good laugh. instead of the lethal punch we decided to get some bottle of spirits this time (since we are all fed up with drinking the cheap wine!) so got a bottle of tequila, sambucca, vodka and bacardi as well as some beers. this made for an interesting night, but we actually managed to get out of the hostel after it had finished which made a nice change!!  I cant remember whether i told you about one of the biggest weekends that we had recently, but if i did apologies. I cant remember when it was, or why we were on it quite so hard...(might have been a bank holiday) but we managed to have quite a few pretty mad nights out that saw 2 people wandering the hostel naked, one local bar managed fired, and sick all over hairstraighteners. NONE of these were me i am pleased to say, i was mearly watching all the chaos going on, but it was a class weekend! we felt a little bad about getting the bar manager sacked, but a little proud at the same time! it was all because we'd had a few too many before going out (thanks to quarters as usual) then went to a local bar where we knew some of the guys behind the bar. We quickly made ourselfs at home in a almost empty club and proceeded to receive free drinks from the bar people. This obviuosly only made things worse and we ended up running a little riot in the bar (not literally) but we were quite drunk by this point. anyway by the end of the night we were behind the bar making our own drinks, getting shots, and still drinking for free. we left a few hours after the club was meant to close holiding a full bottle of baileys which one of the girls just picked up and walked out the door!!! she was however sharing the wealth forcing returning clubbers to have a shot when the walked back through the door of the hostel!! next morning we found out that the bar managed had been sacked!!! oops!  we left the palace a few weeks ago now, and after a 17 (yes 17) hour coach journey arrived in sydney. We are still not sure how the driver managed to drag out a 10 hour journey to 17, but we were not entirely impressed as you can imagine!! anyways after a free nights stay in a hostel in sydney we lived on bondi beach with 5 girls that we had met in melbourne (4 irish one scottish). They are staying in a little appartment right on the coast, and were good enough to put us up for a week whilst we waited for one of our other mates to earn some extra money to come up the coast with. It was nice to be back in Sydney after spending the first few months of my stay in oz there, and even nicer that we were back somewhere that we knew back to front.  We had a few nights out in the city, but genrally just enjoyed being in a nice appartment with our own kitched and dvd player and with some of the coolest girls you could ever want to meet. in order to say thank you we were trying to be nice and helpful cooking nice meals for them such as lasagne, pasta bake, stroganoff and a big roast dinner which all seemed to go down pretty well. The girls made us feel really welcome, and we all got on really well which made it very difficult to leave. living under the same roof and having such a good time meant that we all got quite attached to eachother, but unfortunaltey we had to move on. I am really hoping that we will get to meet up with them again at some point. They are travelling up the coast in a few months, so we will maybe see them at the top, or in perth after that.  from there the actual trip begins. We spent a day in coffs harbour and port mcwairy (not how its spelt but i cant be assed to look it up!) neither of which are anything particulally special i didn't think. They were probably worth visiting to have a look around and they were nice enough, but wouldn't bother returning or recommending them!  We then stayed in bron for a week which is really class. I liked it a lot there. We spent our days chilling out on the beach and our evenings dancing on tables in a local backpacker bar called cheeky monkeys. It was a fairly typical backpacker kind of haunt with wet t shirt comps and other such classy evenings planned! the nights tended to start very innocently, but quickly progressed to everyone dancin on table and the stage after much alcohol. How people didn't fall off tables i am not sure as most people were very well socially lubricated! i almost fell off i dont know how many times, but survived wihout a scratch!! Byron is also the most easterly point in australia which was quite cool.(have done the most southerly point as well..only notherly, and westerly to go!!) We went for a nice walks, hired bikes and visited the local lighthouse with some pretty spectacular views where we also got a picture by the "easterly point" sign. We also sampled some ice cream which is meant to be in the top 10 best in oz (it was FANTASTIC!) then chilled out on the soft sandy beach with crystal clear high 20 degreee temp sea!! jealous yet?! hehe :D  after about a week it was unfortunately time to move on again so we took the short bus trip an hour up the coast to arrive in surfers paradise where we still are now. we have been here for around a week now, and are obviously still enjoying life. the first few days were spent in a "hostel" although we are not sure that this is a accurate description due to it being like no other hostel we have ever stayed in. We had our own room with telly and en-suite bathroom. We had a pool, sauna, steam room, jaquizi, tennis court, squash court massive arcade room and a big kitched and common room with plazma telly!! it was luxury, but sadly the dream had to end!!  we are now staying in a cheaper hostel down the room where they seemed to have turned a 4 bed room cleverly into a 8 bed dorm by sticking 2 more bunk beds in the kitchen / hall way /tv room /  landing by toilet!! saves on walking i guess!! hmm...wasn't impressed when we first arrived, but we are soilduring on!! brave aren'e we! anyways after that slight shock, we are now happy again. We have some pretty cool english guys staying in the other room and have been spending a few nights chilling out in front of the telly. This unfortunatley is playing havoc with us as we are finding ourselfs getting into such classic programs as aussie big brother and neighbours...oh dear! in order to ease the pain a little bit we have been on a couple of big pub crawl nights which has helped to break it up a bit. We paid $30 for two big nights out where we got in to quite a few bars, got free drinks and a free game of drunken bowling (which is always fun!) we have now also enforced a rule that we all have our own song, whenever this song comes on wherever you are you have to drop and do 10 press ups...can make you look a little bit silly, but is quite funny...mine is sexyback by JT...gets played a lot...dammit!  we have also managed one days work, working on a construction site to erect a big tent for a boat show. It was pretty hard work and the guys were less than helpful at explaining what we needed to do, but it was good exercise and the money will come in handy. We were originally promised a full weeks work, but as happens a lot we were told after the first day, that they didn't need all of us! this was a little annoying as we had booked an extra week in the hostel based on this promise of work...nevermind, these things happen!  We are heading to dreamworld tomorrow which is a MASSIVE theme park which i am looking forward to. Its meant to be one of the bigges in the world i think, so it should be pretty good fun! Weather here is still HOT HOT HOT (specially considering its winter!) with temps sitting at around 30 most days! we are starting to get our tans back which is nice and are genrally taking it easy. On sunday we head to brisbane for an unknown length of time (might try and get a couple of weeks work to top up the funds), then to noosa for a few days where we are doing a 3 day canooing tour (with guide obviuosly) and australia zoo, then off to fraser island for a 3 day 4x4 tour (cant wait for this!)  Anyways i think that this is about it for now, keep all the news coming from back home...massive congrats to Paul who is expecting a little girl...gutted i cant be there mate. A big come on the hammers, hope we can stay up. Good luck with the greyhound to the trottescliffe boys...missing you all....good luck for your first league game to the TMCC lot...keep going to all at CAF!! well done on promotion again to the malling A team...have only played once since i have been away...could be on the bench when i get back for a while drinking magners!! cant wait for a curry though!! hi to everyone in oz, and those that are home now...keep me posted on where you are and what your up to...glad the holls went well mum & dad...will reply and or call in the next day or so. hope everyone else is really well, and having as much fun as i am! sorry for the massive email, but it has been a while! i have another 200 photos to post at some point too, so i will get onto this in the next few days and let you know when they are up.